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Wednesday, June 27, 2012

Williams Honda 2013?

As I posited in my last post the introduction of a new 1.6 V4 Turbo charged engine into F1 in 2013 raises the enticing prospect of the return of Honda to the Paddock.

The relevance of this new engine to the production of better, greener, road car technologies is an opportunity that Honda would be keen to exploit. We all know that the company encourage their engineers to explore and play with ideas for new products and technologies and the new F1 engine could easily be created under such conditions.

The manufacturer would have a number of teams interested in the works engine but surely Williams and McLaren are the two which have the best history and relationship with the Honda company; Both teams having produced winning cars with the manufacturer in the past.

McLaren are rumoured to be working on producing their own engine however at the McLaren car Launch in February this year Martin Whitmarsh scotched these rumours and said that they expected to continue with Mercedes into the new engine era. There's no question but that McLaren would be capable and have the funds, staff and expertise on hand at the MTC. Even more importantly, it's unlikely that Cosworth will be able to afford to produce a customer engine next year so they are off the grid and probably for hire to the right team.

Williams then must remain the favourites to grab the Honda badge, with Honda keen to lead the "Green" market by pushing innovation in engine design, increased fuel efficiencies and utilising the KERS technology.

We all saw that the Audi Hybrid won Le Mans a couple of weeks ago and should have had a 1-2 using the Williams flywheel KERS technology. There are rumours that Williams is chasing Audi for engines (which based on the foregoing could be well-founded) but I'd have to say that I would love to see Williams Honda back in the mix, not just for the historical connections but, with the financial benefits of having a works engine rather than a customer engine, Williams would free up the funding to go about building yet another Championship winning car.